CutRight

Offline video editing with evidence attached.

CutRight combines a desktop Studio, a Rust media kernel, & an embedded editing agent. Source media stays immutable, edits are typed transactions, uncertain decisions go to review, & final renders carry verification receipts.

The verified media path

• Immutable, hashed inputs. Ingest registers each source with a blake3: digest; a source outside an immutable registration is a hard error, and hashes are re-verified before use. Tests never copy or modify source files.
• Typed FFprobe/FFmpeg boundaries. Probes and renders go through typed structs (ProbeResponse, RenderSegment, CaptionCue, …), not assembled shell strings; encoder and filter capabilities are probed explicitly.
• Two ASRs, not blind trust in one. CutRight's own Parakeet TDT CoreML engine — built from vendored HeardRight source — supplies native timed words; an independent verifier checks word edges; Silero supplies real speech probabilities.
• Rust owns the arithmetic. Canonical project JSON, timestamp math, and cut plans live in one place, exposed only through the JSON-only videoctl CLI (with a global --dry-run).

One verified path

flowchart LR
    I[ingest<br/>ffprobe + BLAKE3<br/>immutable manifest] --> TR[transcribe<br/>CutRight Parakeet TDT<br/>timed words]
    TR --> B[bench transcribe<br/>primary vs verifier<br/>on sampled boundaries]
    I --> V[analyze local<br/>Silero VAD · waveforms ·<br/>boundary frames]
    TR --> C[edit candidates<br/>beat labels · take ranks ·<br/>drop reasons]
    V --> C
    C --> R[edit render<br/>variant: tight / natural<br/>cut plan + timeline]
    R --> RF[reframe plan<br/>human-approved anchors<br/>for vertical]
    R --> F[render final<br/>presets: youtube · reels<br/>captions burned]
    RF --> F
    F --> Q[evidence build + qa<br/>waveform/boundary proof ·<br/>container/captions/duration]

Loading

Gates that refuse

• bench transcribe requires at least three distinct immutable source clips before either provider is authorized for destructive word-edge cuts — and without a resolved primary-vs-verifier decision, CutRight refuses to call a final render technically approved.
• Vertical delivery is blocked until reframe plan produces a human-reviewed plan with the top-level approved flag and every anchor's approved flag set. It will not silently center-crop a 16:9 cut into a vertical final.
• evidence build and qa produce the waveform/boundary-frame evidence and an explicit QA pass (container, captions, duration) before a render counts as approved.

Provider stack

CutRight owns its speech runtime. The engine is built from vendored HeardRight source under vendor/heardright, and CutRight drives it over a supervised JSON-line stdin/stdout process. Models resolve only from a signed CutRight pack — there is no installed-HeardRight lookup, no sibling checkout, and no engine path override. VAD policy defaults: threshold 0.5, 16 kHz, min speech 160 ms, min silence 180 ms.

Current state: the speech pack ships as metadata only, so discover_engine() returns runtime_pack_unavailable and transcribe --provider heardright is not yet usable from an installed build. Deterministic ingest, analysis, cut, render, QA, and packaging do not depend on it.

WhisperX remains a development-time word-edge verifier running from a project-local Python venv, resolved via CUTRIGHT_WHISPERX_PYTHON (only needed when the venv isn't at the project-relative default or on PATH). CUTRIGHT_FFMPEG likewise points at a development FFmpeg. Both are development conveniences; a release build resolves the verifier and media tools from signed packs instead. Rough cuts use macOS h264_videotoolbox, and HDR input needs an FFmpeg build with zscale.

Run it

bash scripts/gate.sh
cargo run -p videoctl -- doctor
cargo run -p videoctl -- project init  ~/MyVideo.video-project
cargo run -p videoctl -- ingest        ~/MyVideo.video-project clip.mp4
cargo run -p videoctl -- transcribe    ~/MyVideo.video-project --provider heardright
cargo run -p videoctl -- analyze local ~/MyVideo.video-project
cargo run -p videoctl -- edit candidates ~/MyVideo.video-project
cargo run -p videoctl -- edit render   ~/MyVideo.video-project --variant natural
cargo run -p videoctl -- bench transcribe ~/MyVideo.video-project
cargo run -p videoctl -- render final  ~/MyVideo.video-project --preset youtube
cargo run -p videoctl -- reframe plan  ~/MyVideo.video-project
# review analysis/reframe-plan.json, approve every anchor, then:
cargo run -p videoctl -- render final  ~/MyVideo.video-project --preset reels
cargo run -p videoctl -- evidence build ~/MyVideo.video-project
cargo run -p videoctl -- qa            ~/MyVideo.video-project --preset youtube
cargo run -p videoctl -- receipts verify ~/MyVideo.video-project
cargo run -p videoctl -- package social ~/MyVideo.video-project

videoctl exposes project, ingest, transcription, analysis, edit, review, render, QA, packaging, OTIO, & receipt surfaces as JSON-in/JSON-out commands. Use its global --dry-run before any effectful project command.

Product surfaces

• Studio is the Tauri 2 + React 19 desktop editor for sources, transcript, story, beats, timeline, design, motion & sound, comparison, finals, QA, & receipts.
• The media kernel keeps canonical state, rational time, source hashes, actions, revisions, render graphs, evidence, jobs, recovery, & package integrity in Rust.
• The embedded agent uses the same typed actions as Studio & videoctl; confidence & policy decide whether it acts, asks for review, or stops.

Cloud execution is disabled by default. Consent starts off, budget starts at zero, & no production cloud provider ships in this repository.

Licensing

Studio's bundled fonts (Tanker, Geist, Spline Sans Mono) ship under the ITF Free Font License and SIL OFL 1.1 respectively — see apps/studio/src/assets/fonts/LICENSES.md. The built app carries the same notice at /LICENSES.md (apps/studio/public/LICENSES.md, linked from index.html) so the notice travels with the shipped binary, per OFL.

Status

scripts/gate.sh is the repository gate.

CutRight v2 is implemented across 21 Rust crates & Studio. Current macOS 0.1.5 build is signed & notarized. Fresh-user macOS qualification remains open in STATUS.md.

Repository truth docs

• Product overview — what this is and does (generated, code-grounded)
• Architecture — components, flows, interfaces (generated, code-grounded)

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_{Orthic Labs — local-first infrastructure for AI-assisted development.
Membrane · Cortex · Sentinel · Roundtable · Morph · CutRight · claudecodeX}